After President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post late Friday that he will posthumously pardon the late Pete Rose, and criticized the lifetime ban that has kept Rose ineligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is reportedly considering removing Rose from its ineligible list.
Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, was banned from baseball for life in 1989 after a league investigation found he had bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. He remained barred from the Hall of Fame due to his status on MLB’s ineligible list after his death last September.
However, ESPN reported late Saturday that Rose’s daughter Fawn Rose and former lawyer Jeffrey Lenkov met with Manfred and MLB spokesman Pat Courney in December to discuss Rose’s posthumous removal from the ineligible list. Lenkov told ESPN that Manfred was “respectful, gracious, and actively participated in productive discussions” regarding the matter. Lenkov also made it clear that he sees Rose’s place on the ineligible list as the chief obstruction to his Hall of Fame candidacy even though MLB and the Hall of Fame are two separate entities.
Rose was never criminally charged for anything related to gambling, though he did serve five months in prison after pleading guilty to two charges of tax evasion in 1990. Trump’s statement only mentioned Rose’s betting on baseball while he was a player and manager, which Rose finally admitted to in a 2004 autobiography after years of denial.
“Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as “Charlie Hustle,” into the Baseball Hall of fame,” Trump wrote. “Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME!
“Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
Trump did not specify details of what Rose’s pardon would cover, and it’s unclear whether Trump knew of the December meeting between Rose’s camp and MLB before making his statement. Lenkov told ESPN he had “not actively sought” Trump’s help in making Rose’s case for removal from the ineligible list.
Rose maintained until his death that he only bet on the Reds to win games and never against the team. John Dowd, the lawyer who led the investigation into Rose’s gambling that resulted in his lifetime ban, told the New York Post in 2002 that though his report states no evidence was found that Rose bet against the Reds, Dowd believed that Rose probably did so while managing the team from 1984–89.
Dowd also served as Trump’s personal attorney during his first term, representing the president during the special counsel investigation into collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Dowd represented Trump from June 2017 until resigning from his role in March 2018, citing disputes with Trump over legal strategy.
In the years after he accepted a spot on MLB’s permanently ineligible list in August 1989, Rose said he initially believed it did not include ineligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1991, shortly before Rose would have become eligible for enshrinement, the Hall of Fame voted to formalize a long-held tradition that members of the permanently ineligible list were also barred from appearing on the Hall of Fame ballot.
MLB is “not in the pardon business nor does it control admission to the HOF,” Dowd told ESPN after Trump’s comments.
Rose made repeated appeals for reinstatement from his lifetime ban in the years before his death. MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, who negotiated the ban, died of a heart attack eight days after it was implemented; subsequent commissioners Fay Vincent, Bud Selig and Manfred either ignored or outright rejected Rose’s appeals, though Rose was occasionally given special permission to appear in specific events at MLB stadiums, including the 2015 MLB All-Star Game in Cincinnati.
John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, argued in 2016 and 2019 essays that a position on the “ineligible” list ends after death, and ESPN has reported that Manfred and other senior MLB officials hold a similar view despite still keeping the names of Rose and other deceased members formally on the list. However, a Hall of Fame spokesperson confirmed to ESPN in 2020 that the Hall would still consider those on the list ineligible for enshrinement after their deaths.
Rose’s appeals for reinstatement took an added hit in 2017 when he sued Dowd for defamation after Dowd claimed in a July 2015 interview that Rose had committed statutory rape. The lawsuit produced a sworn affidavit from a woman who said Rose had a sexual relationship with her in the 1970s, starting when she was 14 or 15 years old. Rose later acknowledged the relationship but said it started after the woman turned 16, the age of consent in Ohio.
The civil suit was dismissed in December 2017 after Rose and Dowd reached an agreement, and Rose never faced criminal charges over the allegation. However, the revelation of the relationship resulted in Fox Sports firing Rose from his job there as a baseball studio analyst and the Philadelphia Phillies, who he played with for four years, scrapping plans to honor him in an on-field ceremony.
There is also an open question as to how much Rose himself wanted to be in the Hall of Fame in his later years.
After Rose’s death in September, two of his biographers who spoke to Front Office Sports had differing opinions on the subject. “I don’t know if it meant that much to Pete,” said Kostya Kennedy, who wrote Pete Rose: An American Dilemma in 2014 with Rose’s cooperation.
“His not being in the Hall of Fame was part of his schtick; it helped his autograph signing career,” Kennedy said. “Pete had an outsized attraction because of the controversy around him, and it worked to his advantage from a financial perspective.”
However, Keith O’Brien, author of 2024’s Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, told FOS that Rose’s omission from the Hall of Fame “hurt” him and “drove him crazy.”
Rose also holds the MLB records for most games played (3,562) and most games played where his team won (1,972). He said in a 2019 video posted to his Facebook account that out of all his records, he was most proud of the 1,972 wins mark.
Trump has issued numerous pardons since re-assuming office on Jan. 20, including to over 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as Ross Ulbricht, founder of black market website Silk Road, and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
